Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
PLAYER SECTON
NEW YORK, JANUARY 29, 1921
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The Present Hesitancy on the Part of Retail Dealers to Stock Up on Player-
Pianos Will Be Overcome if Manufacturers and Travelers Will Give Them
Go-operative Service That Will Teach Them How Players Should Be Sold
Manufacturers in our industry are going to
ask themselves pretty often during the com-
ing year how best they can secure their output
in face of prevailing conditions. Buying has
dropped away from the high point of the sellers'
market which was still in existence up till the
Summer of 1920. The people are no longer
falling over themselves to buy anything which
may be offered to them. Once more, the prob-
lem of selling has become a problem of methods
and ability. Everything will depend, therefore,
on the measure of the ability and the choice of
methods.
Considering that manufacturers of pianos are
now devoting most of their output to the
player, in one form or another, it is inevitable
that any question like this should be considered
very largely from the standpoint of the player-
piano particularly. In fact, the manufacturer
who succeeds in finding the best way to sell
player-pianos need worry very little about the
other elements in his line.
What Travelers Say
Travelers are out on the road and are re-
porting that the merchants are buying only
from hand to mouth. This is just what was
to be expected, but it is a process which must
not be allowed to go too far. In fact, if it
goes much further it will have gone very much
too far. Merchants are buying from hand to
mouth because they cannot see ahead far
enough to have confidence. They think that
the people will not wish or be able to buy; and
so they are afraid. That is what is" the matter
in most lines of retail business. The retailers
in most lines have started a downward price
movement and the people are waiting until this
movement has come to an end. In the piano
trade the end is already here, for good pianos
cannot possibly be sold at any lower prices
until the entire economic situation of the coun-
try is straightened out to another level. This
will take quite a long time. Commercial pianos
may and probably will undergo further modifi-
cations before the better instruments are af-
fected; but in any case the fact remains that if
piano merchants allow their customers to think
that prices will come down at this time to any
appreciable extent on good pianos they are de-
ceiving the customers and themselves as well.
In spite of this being a known fact, however,
the merchants are continuing to display a coy-
ness in respect of ordering, which can only be
explained on the supposition that they have
temporarily lost confidence in the buying ability
or desire of the communities which they serve.
In these circumstances it is no wonder that
travelers are reporting difficulty in securing or-
ders at the present time.
But it is no use reporting difficulties if one
cannot find solutions for them. And it seems to
us that solutions are to be found. The player-
piano is a peculiar proposition. It is not, as a
distinguished manufacturer remarked the other
day, an "over-the-counter" proposition. The
prospective purchaser must first be sought out
and then sold. This was the normal condition
of the music business always until the coming
of the great war, and it is the condition which
again exists. The purchaser must first be found;
he does not walk in and buy a player-piano as
he buys a pound of steak.
Now, unfortunately, the retail merchants in
our industry are not in general large merchants,
or even, on the whole, extraordinarily talented
in merchandising. Detail need not be furnished,
but every manufacturer, every traveler and every
successful merchant knows the facts. Travelers
especially know them well and know that a
change of conditions like that which we are now
experiencing, even when that change js back to
a normal condition, usually has the effect of
knocking the spirit out of merchants who really
ought to know better. But so long as the piano
business is a business which requires the crea-
tion of the customer as a preliminary to the sale,
it is probable that merchants will continue to
buy at all times less freely than in other lines
they have become accustomed to.
The Hand-to-Mouth Policy
Travelers, therefore, are not far wrong when
they say that at the present moment the mer-
chants are resisting all solicitation. They are
buying, but they are buying hand to mouth.
This simply means that merchants in general
are of the opinion that they cannot afford to
place on their floors any stock in addition to
just enough for a showing, replacing one sold
piano by a new one, and so on. This again
simply means that merchants are lacking confi-
dence in their own ability to go out and find
prospects. This again means that, quite apart
from any local, or even national, conditions of
the people's attitude, towards purchases in gen-
eral, there is a special reason for the reluctance
which merchants process to perceive-
A New Way Wanted
There is. Indeed a very marked reluctance
may be found* among the people, but it is a
reluctance^ Only slightly emphasized by the gen-
er.al .condition of industry. What actually is
true is that.the peopj^ are tired of having the
player-piano hurled af^heir heads on the sole
plea that it can be
^
In a word, the travelers who are reporting
slow buying among merchants would be still
more accurate if they said that the merchants
have to be taught again how to sell at retail,
and that until they have been taught there will
be slow buying.
Service: Then Sales
In a word, if the traveler who is now wonder-
ing how to sell his merchant friends will change
his methods and stop trying to sell altogether
until he has shown the merchant how to get rid
of the goods he wants to load upon him there
will be an immediate revival.
For a long time, those of us who think at all
seriously about matters like these have known
that the day of intensive brainy selling, of creat-
ing the retailer's market for him, was coming
in this industry as it has had to come in other
industries. Candidly, we do not believe that
national advertising in general media, no mat-
ter how ingenious or persistent, can possibly
take the place of that personal education in the
beauties of the player-piano which a well-
equipped expert is so ready and well able to give.
Our Merchandising Problem
In other lines, national advertising may create
for the merchant such an army of prospective
purchasers that he need never be afraid to fill
up on all the stock he can get; but no one who
knows the piano business will believe that the
same sort of system can work out successfully
in our line of business. With us the time and
labor, the money and brains, expended on ad-
vertising through magazines, can much better be
spent, in the judgment of the writer, in pro-
viding a selling corps which can show the mer-
chant how to sell the retail customer and can
actually go out if necessary and dig up the cus-
tomers before the sale is made.
That sort of intensiveness is at the base of
all success in our business, and at the present
time it represents the only possible method
which can keep up the output of factories. That
the people are buying when the right sort of
approach is made can be proved from the testi-
mony of merchants who are at this very moment
proving the pessimists wrong. But most mer-
chants are not so wise or so active. They need
help, and the travelers can give that help.
In a word, then, let the travelers stop trying
to jolly the merchants into buying unwillingly,
and let them rather see what service they can
give their friends by showing the latter how to
sell the player-pianos which they are being asked
to buy. Service first and orders second. There
is the slogan which will restore confidence and
output this year.